A Bel-Air mansion built on speculation is at the center of a legal dispute after a Zillow listing for the $150-million home was hijacked by an unknown user. (Berlyn Photography)

Jockeying for attention across 38,000 square feet are 12 bedrooms, 21 bathrooms, three kitchens, 130 artworks, a 40-seat movie theater, a $30-million fleet of exotic cars, two wine cellars stocked with Champagne, a four-lane bowling alley and a candy room filled with towering cylinders of sweets.

Image is everything when seeking nine figures for a single estate. What, then, happens when that image is allegedly tainted? That’s what a lawsuit filed by the self-assured, suede-jacket-wearing Makowsky against real estate company Zillow aims to find out.

Earlier this year, Zillow falsely showed that the mega-mansion sold for tens of millions less than its asking price. Makowsky sued for $60 million in damages, citing permanent harm to the property’s perception.

On April 19, Zillow filed to dismiss the suit, chiefly citing a section of the Communications Decency Act that protects web operators from being responsible for information published by its users. The hearing is set for June 24.

The sham began in February, when an unknown user with a Chinese IP address and fake phone number side-stepped Zillow’s security measures and toyed with the sale prices displayed on the mansion’s listing.

Zillow displays pages for roughly 110 million homes in the U.S., and it allows owners to go in and change information about their home when necessary. Usually, that means noting a recent remodel or added square footage that may affect a home’s value, but the feature also opens the door for false information.

On Feb. 4, Zillow showed that Makowsky’s home — which is on the market for $150 million — sold for $110 million. It never did. Over the course of the next week, the real estate site falsely reported sale prices of $90.54 million and $94.3 million, as well as a phantom open house that never took place.

Soon after, Makowsky’s attorney Ronald Richards pointed out the falsities to Zillow’s legal team in an email. After some back and forth, included in the lawsuit, Kim Nielson, senior lead counsel for Zillow Group, responded with this:

“Any home on our website can be claimed by the homeowner. There are a series of questions that must be answered, but if someone attempts to claim it enough times, they will know the questions asked (and be able to figure out what information they need to verify their identity).”

She added that not all claims are manually reviewed, which allowed the user to manipulate the listing details without proving their identity.

Later that month, a limited liability company owned by Makowsky filed the lawsuit seeking $60 million in damages. It claims that Zillow “admittedly published false information” and destroyed the property’s perception as an elite listing worth more than $100 million.

Makowsky himself has axed the price twice since bringing the spec house to market for $250 million two years ago. He most recently trimmed the tag to $150 million in January, saying that he was just trying to be realistic.

Makowsky made his fortune selling handbags on QVC before shifting to high-end real estate about eight years ago as the head of BAM Luxury Development Group. (Cindy Ord / Getty Images)

Taking aim at Zillow’s security process, the lawsuit alleges that Zillow has no safeguards in place to stop trolls or criminals from claiming a property and posting false information.

A spokeswoman for Zillow declined to comment on the pending litigation but stressed that it goes to great lengths to display current and accurate data on its website, which is largely sourced from public records.

The complaint also stresses Zillow’s market power. The website leads the real estate industry with an estimated 36 million unique monthly visitors, and Makowsky said multiple colleagues called to congratulate him on a sale that never happened.

But of those millions of monthly visitors to Zillow, few are searching for homes priced in the nine figures other than for aspirational reasons. Fewer have the actual means to afford it.

Only a handful of local L.A. residents, and a small market outside of that, have the ability to buy homes listed for north of $100 million. As of 2017, there were 680 billionaires in the U.S, according to the research firm Wealth-X, and about 2,750 worldwide.

Jerry Jolton, an agent with Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, said three things need to come together to sell a home in the $100-million arena: luck, timing and the right client.

“We’re dealing with a very exclusive group of people who’ve attained such wealth,” he said.

Oftentimes, developers eye international wealth when floating a nine-digit listing. However, Jolton said foreign buyers account for only around 21% of L.A.-area homes sales over $20 million.

Beyond visitors to online listing services, Makowsky faces another challenge in his pursuit of a high-dollar deal: comparable sales in the tony Westside area.

Michael Sahakian, also with Coldwell Banker, sold the property that now holds Makowsky’s mansion back in the ’90s. While noting the estate’s opulence, he said its placement in East Gate Bel Air — one of the city’s most exclusive and pricey pockets — will make selling it a challenge.

Most homes there sell for around $2,000 to $3,000 per square foot. For context, Makowsky’s estate is on the market for $3,947 per square foot.

Still, because an acre of East Gate goes for around $20 million, it’s rare for a home larger than 30,000 square feet to go up for sale.

Makowsky, in his early 60s, made his fortune selling handbags on QVC before shifting to high-end real estate about eight years ago as the head of BAM Luxury Development Group.

His development brand is largely a reflection of his own extravagant interests and tastes; many of the lavish furnishings, finishes and other accouterments incorporated into his projects are sourced from his travels around the world. Custom furnishings produced by high-end brands such as Fendi, Bentley and Louis Vuitton often play an integral role in his homes.

Among his notable projects was a testosterone-infused showplace in Beverly Hills that featured a $200,000 sculpture of a giant blue hand grenade and a replica of James Dean’s motorcycle. Originally listed at $85 million, the 23,000-square-foot house sold in 2014 to Minecraft creator Markus Persson for $70 million.

A confluence of factors ranging from stubborn sellers refusing to budge on their asks, the Trump tax plan’s SALT cap, and a glut of luxury apartments prompted sales of Manhattan real estate to drop again in the fourth quarter, according to reports published by a trio of residential brokers. By one broker’s count, Q1 marked the sixth straight quarterly drop in sales volume,the worst streak in at least 30 years.

Per the FT, sales tumbled by 11%, according to broker Stribling & Associates, by 5%, according to Corcoran, and by 2.7% for co-ops and condominium apartments, according to Douglas Elliman and real estate appraisal firm Miller Samuel.

While the average sales price for new developments climbed a staggering 89.4% to $7.6 million, that figure was exaggerated by a single purchase: Ken Griffin’spurchase of a $240 million penthouseat 220 Central Park South, which, according to some, was the most expensive home ever sold in America. But depending on the report, the median sales price ranged from 2% lower to 3.2% higher. And although the entry level market in Manhattan – that is, apartments priced at $1 million and below – had held up for most of the past year, it has recently started to suffer.

“It’s like a layer cake,” Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel, toldCNBC.“When you have softening at the top, it starts to melt into the next layer and the next layer after that, because those buyers further down have to compete on price.”

According to one broker, sellers with unrealistic expectations are the biggest barrier to sales, because they’re refusing to adjust for the fact that listings have been piling up and sitting on the market for longer periods, giving buyers more room to negotiate, and more options. Inventory has climbed 9% over the past nine months, and there’s a glut in new developments that’s only going to get worse.

And of course, New York City isn’t helping the market by passing an a one-time “mansion tax” on all apartments selling for $1 million or more – which is a large chunk of apartments sold in the borough. But it could have been worse: As one broker put it, the pied-e-terre tax that was briefly considered would have been a “market stopper.”

“The pied-à-terre tax would have been a market stopper, [the mansion tax] is a market dampener,” said Ms Liebman. “I don’t think New York City is acting very friendly right now to the wealthy buyers,” she said, adding that many are opting to buy in Florida and other states with lower taxes than New York.

But although higher taxes are expected to drive more would-be buyers toward rentals, the number of new leases in Manhattan was also down 3% in Q1. Meanwhile, leases climbed a staggering 38% year-over-year in Brooklyn.

As brokers in New York City and other high end markets like Greenwich, Conn. struggle with slowing sales, we imagine brokers in mid-tier markets are watching with a wary eye to see if the weakness spreads.

Large, high-end homes across the Sunbelt are sitting on the market, enduring deep price cuts to sell.

That is a far different picture than 15 years ago, when retirees were rushing to build elaborate, five or six-bedroom houses in warm climates, fueled in part by the easy credit of the real estate boom. Many baby boomers poured millions into these spacious homes, planning to live out their golden years in houses with all the bells and whistles.

Now, many boomers are discovering that these large, high-maintenance houses no longer fit their needs as they grow older, but younger people aren’t buying them.

Tastes—and access to credit—have shifted dramatically since the early 2000s. These days, buyers of all ages eschew the large, ornate houses built in those years in favor of smaller, more-modern looking alternatives, and prefer walkable areas to living miles from retail.

The problem is especially acute in areas with large clusters of retirees. In North Carolina’s Buncombe County, which draws retirees with its mild climate and Blue Ridge Mountain scenery, there are 34 homes priced over $2 million on the market, but only 16 sold in that price range in the past year, said Marilyn Wright, an agent at Premier Sotheby’s International Realty in Asheville.

The area around Scottsdale, Ariz., also popular with wealthy retirees, had 349 homes on the market at or above $3 million as of February 1—an all-time high, according to a Walt Danley Realty report. Homes built before 2012 are selling at steep discounts—sometimes almost 50%, and many owners end up selling for less than they paid to build their homes, said Walt Danley’s Dub Dellis.

Kiawah Island, a South Carolina beach community, currently has around 225 houses for sale, which amounts to a three- or four-year supply. Of those, the larger and more expensive homes are the hardest to sell, especially if they haven’t been renovated recently, according to local real-estate agent Pam Harrington.

The problem is expected to worsen in the 2020s, as more baby boomers across the country advance into their 70s and 80s, the age group where people typically exit homeownership due to poor health or death, said Dowell Myers, co-author of a 2018 Fannie Mae report, “The Coming Exodus of Older Homeowners.” Boomers currently own 32 million homes and account for two out of five homeowners in the country.

Not Just the South

It’s not just big houses across the Sunbelt. It’s big houses everywhere. If anything, I suspect it’s worse in the north. There is an exodus of people in high tax states like Illinois who want the hell out.

Already big homes were hard to sell. Now these progressive states are raising taxes.

(The Wall Street Journal) Gary Barnett was sitting in his Manhattan office one morning in the fall when his old-fashioned flip phone started to buzz. On the line was a real-estate agent who was marketing the New York developer’s latest condo project, a soaring 1,550-foot tall building known as Central Park Tower. With a total projected sellout of more than $4 billion, the skyscraper is the country’s priciest-ever condominium project and, when complete, will be the tallest residential building in the world.

The agent had bad news. Mr. Barnett had…

Gary Barnett was sitting in his Manhattan office one morning in the fall when his old-fashioned flip phone started to buzz. On the line was a real-estate agent who was marketing the New York developer’s latest condo project, a soaring 1,550-foot tall building known as Central Park Tower. With a total projected sellout of more than $4 billion, the skyscraper is the country’s priciest-ever condominium project and, when complete, will be the tallest residential building in the world.

The agent had bad news. Mr. Barnett had agreed to reduce a condo’s asking price, but now the client refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement concealing the details of the deal. Mr. Barnett’s response: Turn him away. “If we’re going to give someone a special deal, we don’t want them saying it all over the market,” he said.

This is a harsh new reality for Mr. Barnett, who has made a fortune fulfilling the real-estate dreams of the world’s elite. The Extell Development Co. founder kicked off the U.S. condo boom with One57, the first of the supertall towers that line the 57th Street corridor now known as Billionaire’s Row. The building’s penthouse sold for $100.5 million in 2014 to tech mogul Michael Dell, the record high for New York City.

His success opened the door for other high-end towers across the city, permanently altering the Manhattan skyline. “The frenzy around One57 gave everyone the idea that this was a market that was ripe to be harvested,” said real-estate appraiser Jonathan Miller.

Central Park Tower is by some measures more audacious than anything that’s preceded it. The supertall skyscraper will feature panoramic views of the city and offer amenities like indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a 1,000-foot-high private club and a basketball court. Of the building’s 179 units, no fewer than 18 are priced above $60 million.

Gary Barnett kicked off the U.S. condo boom with One57. Central Park Tower, shown in a rendering, is the company’s latest project on Manhattan’s Billionaire’s Row.

Mr. Barnett is marketing this super-luxury tower in a challenging climate: Manhattan home sales plunged by 14% in 2018, the steepest drop the industry has seen since the financial crisis in 2009, according to a report by brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate. Today, developers are slashing prices amid an oversupply of new luxury condos.

Some people wonder if Mr. Barnett will become a victim of the condo explosion he helped create. The great Manhattan condo boom “started with One57,” said Mr. Miller, “and it may end with Central Park Tower.”

Earlier this week, Mr. Barnett announced that he had hired Sush Torgalkar, formerly the chief operating officer of Westbrook Partners, as CEO to assist in managing the company’s growth. Mr. Barnett will stay on as the company’s chairman.

A self-described “poor boy from the Lower East Side,” Mr. Barnett grew up as Gershon Swiatycki, the son of a Talmudic scholar. His entry into the world of luxury goods came in 1980s, when he met his first wife Evelyn Muller, whose father owned a diamond business. Mr. Barnett traded precious stones in Belgium for over a decade before starting to invest in U.S. real estate.

Arriving at the sales office in a dark suit with black sneakers and a bold, flowered tie that he said is “probably 20 years old,” the 63-year-old developer is an unlikely purveyor of luxury homes. An observant Jew who largely eschews the flashy trappings of the industry, Mr. Barnett lived in Queens until moving recently with his wife and children to the heavily Orthodox suburb of Monsey, N.Y., about an hour’s drive north of the city. (He keeps a one-bedroom unit at One57 to make more time for work.)

Mr. Barnett’s refusal to give up the antiquated flip phone is a source of indulgent eye-rolling from colleagues. He often avoids computers, said a person who has worked with him; instead, his assistant prints out his emails and leaves them on his desk, where he annotates them in what one employee describes as “serial-killer scrawl” for staff to decipher.

He’s “a total nerd,” real-estate agent Nikki Field said affectionately. “He’s not a New York developer personality in any way.”

Other Manhattan developers thought Mr. Barnett was crazy when he started building One57 in 2010, the depths of the real-estate downturn. And after no major U.S. lenders would back him, he turned to the Middle East to obtain financing from two of Abu Dhabi’s wealthiest investment funds.

His gamble paid off handsomely. As One57 started sales, U.S. economic growth snapped back. As one of the few new luxury condo buildings on the market, One57 attracted billionaires from Russia, China and the Middle East. The condominium is the first ever New York City building to break the $100 million threshold for a single condo.

Central Park Tower faces a far more crowded field of competitors—including One57, where Extell still has units to sell. Approximately 3,763 new Manhattan condo units are in the pipeline for 2019, followed by an additional 4,539 in 2020, new development marketing firm Corcoran Sunshine said late last year. By contrast, in 2011 when One57 started sales, only 277 Manhattan new units launched.

Today, the builders of pricey mega-towers “are going to find themselves in a lot of trouble,” said Andrew Gerringer of the Marketing Directors, a development-marketing firm. “Those are just going to be really difficult to sell.”

But Mr. Barnett is pulling out all the stops. In a newly opened sales office at Central Park Tower, potential buyers sip Champagne and Johnnie Walker Black Label amid a onyx-clad walls and Lalique crystal chandelier. In a dimly lighted room with 14-foot ceilings, strains of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” fill the air as New York City landmarks are projected on the walls—Yankee Stadium, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building. “Is there any place that has symbolized individual success and collective ambition as boldly as New York?” booms the voiceover, describing Central Park Tower as “1,550 feet of steel, ambition and aspiration anchored to 40,000 square feet of Manhattan schist…a shimmering beacon of class, optimism and chutzpah.”

Central Park Tower has already overcome some hurdles. When real-estate company Vornado Realty Trust started planning a competing condo two blocks north, Mr. Barnett stalled the project by taking control of a parking garage on Vornado’s property in addition to other property and air rights it owned on the block. Then Mr. Barnett refused to let Vornado tear down the parking garage to make way for its tower. The dispute was eventually resolved in 2013 when Vornado agreed to pay Extell $194 million for development rights on the block. As part of the settlement, both developers agreed to move their towers slightly so they both could have Central Park views.

Lining up financing for Central Park Tower was also a challenge, since banks have pulled back from financing ultra-luxury condos amid worries of oversupply. Mr. Barnett cobbled together debt from a public offering on the Israeli bond market and tapped the EB-5 program, which grants green cards to foreigners who invest in the U.S. He also brought on SMI USA, the U.S. subsidiary of the real estate investment firm Shanghai Municipal Investment, as a co-developer. Ultimately, Mr. Barnett began construction on Central Park Tower using Extell’s own funds before securing the money to finish it, an unusual move on such a large project. He had built more than 10 stories before J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. agreed to provide a $900 million construction loan. Now he must sell $500 million in apartments at Central Park Tower by December 2020 and pay down $300 million of his loan to J.P. Morgan Chase by the following year, according to information disclosed to Israeli bond investors, who have money in the project. If he fails to meet those deadlines, the bank can increase his interest payments.

Extell has many units to sell in addition to Central Park Tower, including One Manhattan Square on the Lower East Side, which has roughly 800 units.

Of the 179 units in Central Park Tower, no fewer than 18 are priced above $60 million.Photo: Dorothy Hong for The Wall Street Journal

In an email to brokers last month, Extell advertised major incentives at its projects, saying it would pay three to five years of common charges on any Extell condo purchased before the end of 2018—at Central Park Tower, that could save the buyer of a full-floor apartment about $120,000 per year. That incentive wasn’t renewed for 2019, although Extell is still paying a 50% commission to brokers and says it will roll out new incentives soon. With buyers “saying they’ll wait a little bit and see if prices come down more,” Mr. Barnett explained, “we want to give them an incentive to act.”

He declined to say how many units he’s sold at Central Park Tower, noting only that traffic had been “decent” and that he isn’t concerned about missing financing deadlines. “We’re certainly going through a dip in the market, but we’re priced for that dip,” Mr. Barnett said confidently. In the current market, he added, “you’ve got to be a little more flexible on price.”

Extell is also leveraging the roster of billionaires it accumulated during One57’s glory days. But the strategy could backfire, especially as sellers who bought condos there a couple of years ago are suffering losses. In one instance, Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll sold a One57 unit for $54 million, over $1 million less than what he paid in 2014. One57 has even seen a foreclosure, a rarity in New York’s high-end real estate. In 2017, an apartment that had been owned by shell companies linked to a Nigerian businessman sold in a foreclosure auction for $36 million, far less than the $50.9 million purchase price in 2014.

But these challenges seem to be part of the allure for Mr. Barnett, who said in comparison to his former business, he relishes the complexity of New York City real-estate deals. “These buildings are amazing buildings—they’re complicated, they’re fine-tuned,” he said. “Diamonds are a much simpler business.”

Since the emergence of ‘Billionaire’s Row’ in Manhattan, home values in the area have skyrocketed.

An analysis of sales data looked at transactions between 2010 to 2018 of homes from 57th to 59th streets between Park Avenue and Broadway. During that time, the median sale prices leapt 64.3%, from $1,261,406 in 2010 to $2,072,500 eight years later, according to Streeteasy.com. By comparison, the median home sale price across Manhattan rose 25.7%, from $835,000 to $1.05 million, during that same period.

Toll Brothersannouncedits fourth quarter results on Tuesday, unleashing a fresh flood of concerns about the state of the housing market after it disclosed its first drop in orders since 2014. Orders were down 13% from the year prior, missing the analyst estimate of a 5% increase in dramatic fashion.

The company focuses much of its business on the California high-end home segment, which – as a result of the housing bubble in most west coast cities and rising rates, is facing an “affordability crisis” coupled with a sharp drop in overseas demand. According to the company, orders for the state were down an astounding 39%.

The company blamed rising rates for the drop off in buyer demand, as well as sinking stock prices. What is odd is that stock prices haven’t really “sunk” – unless the company was referring to its own stock…

... with the CEO blaming “the effect on buyer sentiment of well-publicized reports of a housing slowdown” for the plunge in orders. You see, it’s not the housing market that is slowing: it is perceptions about the market slowing, that is hitting the company.

That said, “perceptions” are correct: as we noted last week, new home salescrashed in October, suffering the biggest plunge since 2011.

Even so, the atrocious quarter didn’t deter all analysts, who promptly defended the stock. Drew Reading, Bloomberg Intelligence analyststatedthat “there are many positive factors underpinning the economy that we believe are supportive of the housing sector longer-term, and our affluent markets particularly.”

Tolls dismal results follows signs that we have been discussing for much of the past year, which have confirmed that the luxury housing market is cooling off across the country.

Recently, weprofileda mansion in Chicago that was taken off the market after being listed for $50 million and only being assessed for $19.4 million. United Automobile Insurance Chairman and CEO Richard Parrillo constructed the 25,000 sq ft Lincoln Park mansion a decade ago, after buying the property in 2005 for $12.5 million from the Infant Welfare Society.

After two years on the market, Parrillo and his wife held firm at $50 million, a record for the region, their original listing agent told theChicago Tribune. The agent said the couple plowed more than $65 million into the estate, including land cost.

Cook County Assessor’s Office reports shows the mansion’s $50 million asking price was hugely overinflated versus its most recent estimated market value, which stood some 60% lower, at $19.4 million. The report notes the 2018 property value is significantly higher from the assessor’s $14 million estimated market value for the mansion in 2017, due to a quick burst in high-end home sales in the last several years that had since cooled.

Singapore has now overtaken Hong Kong as the top city for luxury home price gains in Q3.

Luxury home prices in Singapore were up 13% in the third quarter from the year prior, according toKnight Frank LLP’s Prime Global Cities Index. The rising prices were partly the result of limited supply of higher end properties.

Hong Kong instead fell to 14th place, with just a 5.5% year-over-year gain during the third quarter.

And the rise in Singapore does little to offer a picture of what the luxury property market looks like globally. Worldwide, luxury properties rose by just 2.7% on average across the 43 cities that make up the index – this is the weakest performance in annual terms in almost 6 years.

Cities like Edinburgh and Madrid found themselves in the top five, while London wound up moving into negative territory, watching prices fall 2.9% as a result of the continuing uncertainty around Brexit. Cities like Paris and Berlin posted steady gains of 5.6% and 5.4%, respectively.

Also among the decliners was Dubai, where prices fell 3.8% resulting in the middle eastern city being the fifth worst on the list. Stockholm, Istanbul and Taipei all registered 6.3% year-over-year declines, tying them all for second worst place.

Finally, pulling up the rear is Vancouver, where we havespent time documentinga collapsing real estate bubble over the last couple of months. Vancouver saw its luxury home prices down 11% as more affluent pockets of the city, like West Vancouver, saw a pronounced slowdown in sales.

At the beginning of October, we asked readers what happens when prices rise so high that a chasm forms between bids and asks in Vancouver? The market grinds to a halt.

That’s what happened in September, whenaccording to the Real Estate Board of Vancouver(REBGV), residential property sales tumbled by 17.3% from August 2018, and a whopping 43.5% from one year ago. In fact, a total of only 1,595 transactions took place as both buyers and sellers continue to sit on their hands amid confusion whether the recent torrid price gains will continue or whether the housing bubble has burst.

Sales of detached properties in July was just 508, a decrease of 40.4% from the 852 recorded in September 2017, and the 812 apartments sold was a 44% drop compared to the 1,451 sales in September 2017.

And no, it’s not seasonal: last month’s sales were a whopping 36.1% below the 10-year September sales average.

No sooner didwe reportthat the housing “recovery” over the last 10 years has skipped many “underwater” communities in the United States, than we found confirmation of the opposite: Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is selling his Park Avenue apartment in Manhattan for three times the price that his aunt paid for it 18 years ago. He has listed the apartment for $32.5 million. His Aunt is listed as the broker on the sale.

The sale is happening at the same time that residents of numerous commuter towns across the United States haveseenthe values of their houses collapse to less than half of what they were in 2006, prior to the housing crisis.

Mnuchin recently listed the 6500 square-foot, 12 room apartment that he bought from his aunt in 2000. It was purchased then for just $10.5 million. It had been in his family since the 1960s and, when he turns around to list the property this time, he stands to net $22 million more than what he paid for it, if his asking price is met.

The apartment is being listed by Warburg Realty and is located inside of 740 Park Ave., inside the historic Rosario Candela building. Other famous former tenants of this building include the Rockefellers and the Kochs. Currently, Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of Blackstone Group, lives there. The building was developed by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ grandfather.

Other than that, it’s just your average ordinary run of the mill apartment on Park Avenue: five bedrooms, a wall wood paneled library, a wet bar, a formal dining room, a private elevator, 11 foot ceilings, marble floors and a sweeping spiraling staircase that still has its original banister.

The first floor of the apartment has six bathrooms and an 800 square-foot living room.

Upstairs, the apartment has a master suite, walk-in cupboards, study, two more bathrooms and three extra bedrooms. The apartment spans two levels in the building on both the eighth and the ninth floor and it also has a large kitchen with a “breakfast nook”.

While that all seems extremely glamorous, Mnuchin hasn’t even used this apartment as his main residence, reportedly. Mnuchin was living in California before his appointment to the Trump administration, but has since bought a $12.6 million apartment in Washington DC.

We’re glad to hear that Mnuchin was able to ride out the housing crisis successfully. We were worried about him for a moment.

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